New Tools for the Negative: International Fiat and
Plan-Inclusive Counterplans

Gordon Mitchell, Northwestern University

1992 - Effluents and affluence: The Global Pollution
Debate

A plan-inclusive counterplan (PIC) is a policy advanced by the negative which
contains part, but not all of the affirmative plan. The negative uses
international fiat when they advance a counterplan which uses a non-U.S.
actor. In the barrel of international and plan-inclusive counterplans, there
are both good and bad apples. In this article, I will report on the flavor as
I bob for both kinds.

MICROSCOPIC
EXCEPTION CIP

Plan: The U.S. should use
trade pressure to force the Brazilian government to refrain from cutting down
trees in the Amazon forest.
C/P: Same as plan, except trade pressure should not be applied to prevent the
cutting down of one particular tree in the forest.
Net Benefit: The particular tree in question is old and leans precaaiously
over a fragile hut, therefore, it should be felled to protect against injury
to the inhabitants of the hut. Safety of the humans outweighs miniscule
increase in CO2 soaked up by the one tree.

This
is the prototypical example of an abusive PIC, since the exception it carves
out of the plan is microscopic, i.e., the only difference between the plan
and the PIC is its policy effect on one single tree. In utilizing this
counterplan strategy, the negative aims to bypass debating the general claims
of the 1AC by staking the debate on the narrow question of the value of the
one particular tree. With imagination, one can envision the eccentric nature
of other, closely related PICs in this family (e.g. exempting a single
destitute rural farmer from the plan's regulations, or narrowing the plan's
reach to exclude one small, environmentally conscious logging company deep in
the Amazon basin).

Those
who approach microscopic affirmative plans with suspicion will probably also
harbor reservations about endorsing this type of PIC on the grounds that it
fails to meet a certain unstated standard of policy significance that is
derived not from a qualitative modifier in the resolution, but instead has
implicit roots in the policy making process. In this line of thinking,
ridiculously tiny affirmative plans could be dismissed as too trivial to
merit discussion, or, alternatively, rejected because the miniscule
advantages accrued fail to overcome the inherent risk of change. Applying
this standard symmetrically to the negative. one might argue that the net
benefit accrued by a microscopic exclusion PIC (the safety of a few jungle
inhabitants) is too trivial to merit discussion. Or alternatively, the
affirmative may hijack the "inherent risk of change" standard by
arguing that by endorsing the vast majority of affirmative plan action, the
negative assumes a burden of demonstrating that there is a significant reason
to avoid executing the plan's mandates in a certain area. In this
formulation, when running a microscopic exclusion PIC. the negative embraces
the burden of overcoming an "inherent risk of not changing."

In
thinking about this PIC, two additional strategic possibilities deserve
mention. First, the negative may be able to bolster the theoretical
legitimacy of their microscopic exception PIC by arguing that it is not
topical. This move is easy when the resolution contains an absolute modifier
such as "all", since a policy which contains an exception
automatically does not meet the "all" requirement of the
resolution. However, when the qualitative modifier in the resolution is not
as clear-cut (e.g. "worldwide"), the negative still may be able to
prove the their PIC not topical, but the job becomes more difficult. In the
case we have been considering, the argument would be that by leaving a
certain area of the forest untouched by, the affirmative plan action, the PIC
does not reduce pollution worldwide, but instead only in selerted areas.

Second,
the affirmative should be aware of the fact that microscopic exclusion PICs
can be defeated rather easilv with crafty plan construction. Briefly, if the
wording, of the plan is sufficiently open-ended, the affirmative may be able
to argue that the specified exception can be incorporated into the plan. In
the case we are considering, would the affirmative plan have been written to
place trade pressure on Brazil to force the government to stop cutting down
trees in "reasonable and appropriate" locales, the affirmative team
may have grounds to argue that the plan does not necessarily block the
removal of the potentially hazardous tree cited by the negative team, and thus
is no different from the PIC.

DIRECTIONAL
FOCUS CIP

Plan: Plank one: The U.S.
should cut aid to Africa that is targeted for the purpose of developing
fossil-fuel buning power plants. Plank two: The U.S. should give aid to
Africa that is targeted for the purpose of improving energy efficiency.
C/P: Plank one of the plan.
Net Benefit: "Foreign aid bad" disadvantages outweigh advantages
accrued by giving energy efficiency technology to Africa.

The
contention that the negative should be allowed to advance topical counterplans
on bidirectional topics has been floating around for awhile. Over a decade
ago, Panetta contended that "The topical counterplan mitigates against
the huge advantage that is provided affirmatives by directionless
topics." Perhaps a corollary of this increasingly-accepted view is that
the negative should be allowed to advance PICs when faced with
multi-directional affirmative plans.

In
the example above, the affirmative plan goes in two different
"directions"-- it simultaneously increases and decreases foreign
aid to Africa. Assuming that the affirmative is able to defend the topicality
of each plank- of the plan independently, i.e. show that each plank contains
a unique mechanism to reduce pollution, the negative may find their usual
generic attack against foreign aid cases neutralized in this instance, since
that affirmative could contend that their plan has no net effect on the level
of U.S. foreign aid. However, the "directional focus" PIC offers a
potential remedy for the negative. By counterplanning with part of the plan,
the negative sets up the opportunity to demonstrate a net benefit by proving
the directional action contained in the other part of the plan to be, on the
whole, disadvantageous.

In
my view, permitting the negative this degree of strategic latitude will
produce better debates. Given this year's likely affirmative breadth, in many
rounds where the negative lacks on point evidence, pinning down a directional
link on a generic trade/aid policy disadvantage may be the only hope.
Bidirectional topics severely complicate the task of negative preparation. To
fashion a competent generic arsenal on the 1992-93 topic, negatives must come
up with positions against four big targets: increasing aid, decreasing aid,
cooperative trade, and competitive trade.' The fact that the negative side
may not know which one of these targets the affirmative may raise in any
given debate is hard enough. Insisting on allowing the negative the option to
focus on one of the targets via PIC once the round is underway provides to
them at least a minimum floor of argumentative ground.

If
debate is seen as part of the democratic process, then it makes sense for
debate to consider only alternatives which aresubject to democratic
influence. While the responsiveness and rationality of government actors is
highly imperfect, U.S. governmental actors are ultimately accountable to the
public and must therefore be at least somewhat attentive to public argument.
Foreign governments clearly have no such accountability to the U.S. public
and very minimal incentives to be attentive to argument within American
media.

EXISTING
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION CIP

Plan: The U.S. government
should send economic assistance to the Third World to encourage sustainable
development.
C/P: The World Bank and UNEP, utilizing current institutional structures and
resources, should send economic assistance assistance to the Third World to
encourage sustainable development.
Net Benefit: Unilateral U.S. action bad (America First DA, Bush DA, etc.)

If
negative fiat can be called the gasoline necessary to make a policy run, this
counterplan gets excellent mileage. It is modest in scope because of the fact
that it's mandates promise only to utilize existing institutional structures
and resources. This promise not only saddles the negative with the burden to
prove that the World Bank and UNEP possess sufficient resources and are
institutionally capable of carrying out the counterplan mandates, it also
opens the door for the affirmative to craft solvency and workability
challenges that cannot be simplemindedly dismissed with the magical
invocation of fiat. Consider that the counterplan might be supported by the
following solvency evidence:

Pressure on the World Bank
through the NGOs and through the United States Congress, as well as the
election of a new president of the Bank, Barber Conable, in 1986, ushered in
a new relationship between the Bank and UNEP. The sustainable development
concept has become a common denominator to the relationship. The UN General
Assembly and the national governments are committed to sustainable
development, and the UN system must follow suit.

On
one hand, the negative could use this evidence to support the claim that
their chosen international actor possesses the institutional expertise to
capably initiate a massive sustainable development policy. On the other hand,
the affirmative might attack the evidence by pointing out that it contains no
proof that the chosen agent has sufficient financial resources at its
disposal to fund the policy. Too often, such a dialogue is silenced by the
negative's invocation of fiat. But, when the negative limits itself to using
only existing institutions and resources, questions about the capability of
the international organization to act become ammunition for affirmative
solvency salvos, instead of serving as reasons why the negative's claim to
fiat is illegitimate.

Solt
has raised an interesting challenge to this counterplan by attempting to show
that the fiat of an international organization is actually single-country
fiat en masse:

International organizations
derive their powers from and are ultimately accountable to individual
governments. A prerequisite of changing the policy of an international
organization would be to first change the policy of enough non-American
governments to pen-nit the counterplan. Thus, such a counterplan involves
foreign fiat once again, albeit at one remove.

Consider,
however, an affirmative plan which calls for the U.S. government to pass
domestic legislation to protect the spotted owl. Applying Solt's same
reasoning here produces an odd result: "the U. S. government derives its
powers from and is ultimately accountable to individual citizens. A
prerequisite of changing the policy of the U.S. government would be first to
change the minds of enough American citizens to permit the plan. Thus, such a
plan involves individual citizen fiat once again, albeit at one remove."
From this does it follow that the affirmative loses its fiat power over the
federal government because individual citizen fiat is illegitimate? Of course
not-U.S. citizens have already ceded authority to the U.S. govenment, and the
affirmative team has the right to assume that this source of authority will
continue to exist during the implementation of the plan. Likewise, individual
foreign governments have already ceded authority to the UN and WorldBank, and
the negative team has the right to assume that this source of authority will
continue to exist during the implementation of the counterplan.

Solt
suggests that fiat of international organizations which do not contain the
U.S. as a member is particularly illegitimate. In the case we are
considering, not only is the U.S. a member of the World Bank, but plays a
significant role in the policymaking process of the international
organization. In fact, according to Walden Bello,

Indeed, because of the
institution's 'multilateral' image, many U.S. officials prefer to go through
the World Bank to effect policy changes with client govemments...'Because it
is something of a disinterested party, however, the World Bank has been
enormously successful in negotiating important policy changes which we
strongly support.'

This
evidence seems to implicate the importance of the World Bank in the context
of U.S. policymaking enough to qualify our counterplan for Solt's
"policy context standard" for fiat. To legitimately claim fiat
under this standard, the negative needs to demonstrate that their counterplan
option is treated as a serious alternative in the relevant policy literature.
In Solt's words,

[the policy context standard]
places a relatively clear and objective limit on negative fiat. Field context
is a familiar and empirically functional standard of topicality analysis.
Policy context is considered to be a good standard for determining what a
topic means in order to place limits on affirmative case selection.
Similarly, it seems appropriate that policy context defme the range of
alternatives considered germane to a discussion of a certain policy area.

The
policy context standard is a particularly useful marker to use in drawing the
boundaries of legitimate international fiat. The negative retains potentially
valuable counterplan options, while the affirmative enjoys the opportunity of
being able to anticipate possible alternative actors by scanning the
literature.

NEW
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION CIP

Plan: The U.S. should provide
the UN with massive funding earmarked for the development of international
programs to reduce marine pollution.
C/P: A new, private international organization called C.U.O.P.(Citizens
United for Ocean Protection) should be created, whose sole purpose is to
enforce worldwide marine pollution standards.
Net Benefit: LDCs hate the UN, they backlash against its environmental
regulations.

The
first problem with this counterplan is that it relies on fiat to create the
organizational infrastructure necessary to carry out the mandates of its
policy. No C.U.O.P. currently exists, so before the negative employs fiat to
implement marine pollution policies, it must first have individual citizens
of the world join together in transferring authority to the collective body
of C.U.O.P. Allowing the negative this degree of fiat latitude seems problematic.
The affirmative loses its ability to predict the possible agents that might
be utilized by the negative, and because C.U.O.P has no track record or
history to scrutinize, the affirmative also loses its ability to fashion
solvency attacks supported by empirical evidence. The likely result of
permitting the negative to fiat the creation of new international
organizations is vacuous debate featuring hypothetical affirmative solvency
challenges parried by the negative with the blunt "fiat takes out"
claim.

Another
problem is the fact that the negative's chosen international actor is a
private [as opposed to an inter-governmental] organization. As Solt points
out,

Such an extension of negative
fiat suggests the following potential counterpla[n]. In a debate over
pollution control, the negative could argue that the government should not
establish stricter standards because industry 'should' voluntarily control
its emissions.

The
absurdity of this example seems sufficient to justify limiting negative fiat
to the governmental or inter-governmental, i.e. public sphere. Private fiat
is a Pandora's box. When opened, one can peer in and see the negative team
fiating love and nonviolence, or perhaps most ridiculous, fiating victory by
advancing a counterplan with the judge as the agent and a negative ballot as
the mandate.

One
final problem with using C.U.O.P. as a counterplan agent is the fact that the
U.S. government is not a member of the organization. Solt proposes limiting
fiat to only those actors which are accountable to the public within the U.S.
democratic process. This not only rules out using individual foreign
governments as actors, but also international organizations to which the U.S.
is not a member [such as C.U.O.P.] However, in the case of international
institutions which enjoy U.S. membership, perhaps an argument can be made
that because of U.S. involvement, a sufficient linkage to the American
political process can be assumed, justifying fiat.

CONCLUSION

In
discussing each of these counterplans, I have attempted to ease into some
general distinctions that taken together, form a dividing line that separates
legitimate and illegitimate uses of negative fiat. In my final section, I
will attempt to sharpen this line by elucidating what I take to be prudent
and fair limitations the negative's freedom to counterplan, while also
providing insight into how best to employ these limitations as arguments in
actual debates.

The
negative should have the option of offering topical and nontopical
plan-inclusive counterplans (PICs), with one important stipulation, that the
exception carved out of the plan must meet a certain significance standard.
Those debaters who can fashion and persuasively defend exact provisions of
such a standard will meet with the most success. One possible standard is
that the part of the plan which the negative focuses on via PIC must be
significant enough to generate meaningful public-policy discussion. This
standard could be employed by the affirmative to defeat a microscopic exception
PIC, or by the negative to support a directional focus PIC. The affirmative
might choose to augment their standard with a presumption shift-style
argument, contending that in embracing the broad majority of the affirmative
plan, the negative team takes on a burden of proof to show that the entirety
of the plan shouldn't be done. And finally, either side might employ the
standard that the exception carved out of the plan must be a substantive
element of the plan, rather than merely a procedural or logistical component.

On
the question of international fiat, the negative should have the option of
utilizing counterplan actors other than the domestic U.S. government, with
the following stipulations. First, the actor must be an international,
inter-governmental organization (as opposed to a private NGO). Second, the
U.S. government must hold membership in the organization. Third, only
currently existing institutional structures and resources may be used to
facilitate implementation of the counterplan mandates.

In
employing this theoretical scheme for filtering out dubious international
counterplans, debaters should focus on the following questions. First, does
the international organization that the negative has picked as an agent
currently possess sufficient institutional resources to carry out the
mandates of the counterplan? If not, the affirmative should seize the
opportunity to reduce the solvency capability of the counterplan and insist
that the negative cannot respond to them by invoking fiat. If the negative
succeeds in proving that they meet the current institutional resource test,
the wise affirmative will fashion resource tradeoff disadvantages against the
counterplan, arguing that the negative's mandates will divert the
international organization from tackling more important problems by sapping
its funds or personnel.

A
second important issue is determining the level of authority that the
international organization enjoys to force compliance by member states.
Denied single-foreign country fiat, the negative is left only with the
autonomous authority of their chosen international organization for
enforcement of their counterplan mandates. Some international organizations
have accumulated enough indigenous authority to influence national
governments, while others have not.

The
recipe for high-octane argumentation includes a move beyond absolute
theoretical stances on both PICs and international fiat counterplans, relying
instead on a more subtle theory that draws sensible distinctions between
specific types of counterplans within each general family. Negative flat is
not an all-or-nothing ballgame. Rather,

Debate
theory must also be dialectical, balancing a plurality of interests--
intellectual, competitive, and educational. Previous paradigms tend to be
one-sided, to view debate almost solely as a mode of intellectual inquiry or
almost solely as a game. The reality is that academic debate is (and should
be) both. The pluralistic view of debate theory would seek to strike a
balance between the competing values and interests. Thus, in the case of
negative fiat, a balance must ultimately be struck between the value of
political realism on one hand and the value of speculative intellectual
inquiry on the other.

Notes

1 As Panetta
and Dolley suggest, "The problem of determining what is 'significantly
different' policy is not one this negative strategy [the topical counterplan]
has forced upon debate. For many years, affirmative teams have proposed
'insignificant' policy options and critics have not only established standards
for evaluation, in many cases they have voted for them. In a debate in which
a questionable counterplan is presented. the critic could stipulate that the
counterplan must be substantially different from the affirmative plan’Ä¶"
("The Topical Counterplan," Argumentation and Advocacy, Winter 1989, p.
173).
2 See Panetta and Dolley, P. 173.
3 Such as the 1985-86 college topic, which called for minimum academic
standards to be adopted in "all elementary and secondary schools in the
U.S." Predictably, microscopic exclusion PICs were generally accepted as
theoretically legitimate under this resolution, since they violated the
resolutional word all. Most popular were PICs which exempted the Amish , the
handicapped, and Indians.
4 For this interpretation of the topic to fly, the negative would need to
establish that worldwide means everywhere, or at all points. Perhaps the
existence of the word "entire" in the following definition from
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary turns the trick: "worldwide adj.
extended throughout or involving the entire world." (1975 ed., P. 1352).
5 Perhaps this is what Panetta had in mind when he wrote "If the
alternative presented by the negative does not compete with the example
claimed in the first affirmative, there is no reason why the affirmative
could not incorporate the minor alterations into their plan, or why both
plans could not be adopted simultaneously." ("The Topical
Counterplan: Reassening Negative Ground," 1981 Debater's Research
Guide,
p. IO).
6 ibid., p. 11.
7 Hopefully, the topic committee will revise the topic to exclude domestic
aid and U.S. interstate trade cases by inserting the word "foreign"
in the resolution to modify "trade and/or aid policies." If this
change is not made, the negative will be saddled with at least three more
targets-for watertight evidentiary support, see DRG/A94.
9 Lynton Caldwell, International Environmental Policy, (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1990) P. 81.
10 Roger Solt, "Negative Fiat: Resolving the Ambiguities of
'Should."' Argumentation and Advocacy, Winter 1989, P. 134-5.
11 ibid., P. 136.
12 Walden Bello, Covert Action Information Bulletin, Winter 1991-92, p.
22. Bello goes even further: "Over that nearly half a century, the World
Bank has been a closely held and controlled arm of U.S. foreign policy,
largely free from the constraints of legislative, judicial or popular
influence." (P. 20).
13 Solt, P. 136.
14 Solt, P. 122.
15 See Panetta and Dolley, P. 172.
16 "Both the United Nations and Council of Europe commissions on human
rights have power to monitor compliance and to demand explanations from
signatories for reported lapses. The International Labor Organization also
keeps tabs on whether members are complying with its standards. 'Tbe agency
can often generate enough pressure in at, investigatory stage to bring an
errant country into line, making its second stage-a public hearing to explain
delinquency unnecessary." (Worldwatch, May/June 1992, p.
29-30).
17 Solt, P. 123.